Meghan Markle and Prince Harry did not actually get married 3 days before their wedding

Meghan Markle’s startling revelation to Oprah Winfrey that she and Prince Harry were secretly married three days before their extravagant royal wedding has been controversial by the couple’s legal marriage certificate, released Monday by a British tabloid.

A representative of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex later confirmed to the Daily Beast and NBC’s “Today” that there was in fact no early legal marriage, but that “the couple exchanged personal vows a few days before their official wedding. / legal on May 19 “three years ago.

Markle told Winfrey in a March 7 interview that she and her prince tied the knot in the garden of her home with the Archbishop of Canterbury who appears to be presiding three days before her wedding at St George’s Chapel. of Windsor Castle.

“You know, three days before our wedding, we got married. Nobody knows, ”Markle said. “We called the archbishop and just said,‘ Look, this thing, this show, is for the world. But we want our union between us’. So the votes we framed in our room are just the two of us in the back garden with the Archbishop of Canterbury. “

Harry made a joke, “Only us,” referring to the archbishop, the Reverend Justin Welby.

His garden at the time was Nottingham Cottage, his home at Kensington Palace.

But a copy of the couple’s marriage certificate obtained by The Sun reveals that they were legally married on May 19, the day of their public wedding in Windsor.

The discrepancy is important because British critics must undermine the Sussex interview, especially the disturbing revelation that someone in the royal family expressed “concerns” about the darkness of their baby’s skin.

Former TV host Piers Morgan, a frequent critic of Markle, immediately jumped on the marriage issue Monday and asked in a tweet, “Do we still have to believe him?”

Journalists had previously quoted sources as saying that Markle was talking about private votes and not a legal marriage, but that was far from clear in the interview.

The British press was immediately skeptical about the revelation of the marriage after the interview because official marriages require two witnesses, beyond “just us”.

Officials questioned by British journalists initially went head-to-head on the issue. An official said Markle was “confused.” Another source said the Archbishop of Canterbury “doesn’t do private weddings,” adding, “Meghan is American; she doesn’t understand.”

But after The Sun obtained the marriage certificate, former chief Stephen Borton told the newspaper, “I’m sorry, but Meghan is obviously confused and clearly uninformed. They didn’t get married three days before the ‘Archbishop of Canterbury’.

The “Special License I Helped to Write” allowed them to get married in St George’s Chapel in Windsor and what happened there on May 19, 2018, and [what] was seen by millions of people around the world was the official wedding recognized by the Church of England and the law, “he added.

Borton said he suspected the couple exchanged a few “simple vows” to the archbishop – or “most likely it was a simple rehearsal.” He said Nottingham Cottage “is not an authorized place” for a royal wedding and also did not have enough witnesses.